2.5k hands so far

Super small sample, break even overall.

I have a habit when playing after a break to fight for too many pots, and this showed itself again in two different forms.
1/ I recklessly 5-bet shoved A2o against an aggressive late position opener who 4-bet from the button. I was convinced in terms of game flow and given his wide steal range that he would be 4-betting light in that spot quite often plus I had a blocker. He did call though and I was dominated.

The trouble with 5-bet shoving light is that the odds we're laying ourself aren't that good. If I have 25% equity against a calling range (true in this case) and I'm risking two and a half times the pot then I need a large percentage of his 4-bet range to fold for it to become profitable (I think it's around 40%). This sounds possible but pretty unlikely.

2/ I made a call with ace high on a double paired board against an aggressive fish. The board played out in a way that it counter-fit all of his low pairs and all of the draws missed. So I decided to play bluff catcher.

I can name plenty of times in the past when this might have been a reasonable call against certain opponents and I guess I threw this guy in with the same player type. The problem was I had very few hands on him. He was certainly a fish (weird bet sizing plus less than full stack) but I don't think I had enough hands to reliably make an ace high call. He could have turned out to be a really passive fish who only bets the nuts (which he had in this case).

Other than these two big mistakes I think I've played pretty solidly. Enough of my opponents were making errors against me that I'm pretty confident that I can beat this limit providing I can cut out mistakes like the above.

I can sense that some of my sharpness is returning with time and hands and I think that I will make fewer mistakes as time goes on. And really this is the essence of poker; the challenge is to reach a standard where the very best players at your limit are making no fewer mistakes than you are. GL

I'm Back

Good Morning

It's a rather lovely British bank holiday Sunday and I'm up for some Zoom poker.

In the last few weeks I've begun to get a bit of an itch to play again so I've decided to put in a few thousand hands at 50NL Zoom. I'm pretty busy so I'll have to fit it around other commitments but hopefully I'll be able to manage a few thousand hands per week.

Once I've reached a milestone (maybe 50k hands) I will post some graphs and give some thoughts on the current state of the games.

I really don't anticipate much because after a year out my game is likely to be very rusty. Additionally I imagine that there are new trends and theories doing the rounds that I will not yet be aware of.

I'm not sure how much of a renaissance this will be but for now I'm back at the tables. GL!

Edit:

Message from PokerStars:
Welcome back to PokerStars, where the Stars come to play!
As a welcome back present, we'd like to deal you quads.

Thank you for playing at PokerStars!

PokerStars Zoom Hand #99121709247:  Hold'em No Limit ($0.25/$0.50) - 2013/05/26 10:32:19 WET [2013/05/26 5:32:19 ET]
Table 'Arp' 9-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: Interface21 ($25 in chips)
Seat 2: wordsmt ($55.04 in chips)
Seat 3: chachar73 ($43.75 in chips)
Seat 4: Blood Out444 ($61.76 in chips)
Seat 5: daveaneo ($25.50 in chips)
Seat 6: Hero ($56.68 in chips)
Seat 7: tezonchik ($54.64 in chips)
Seat 8: faustus2 ($48.50 in chips)
Seat 9: The Cambist ($50 in chips)
wordsmt: posts small blind $0.25
chachar73: posts big blind $0.50
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Hero [9c 9s]
Blood Out444: folds
daveaneo: raises $0.65 to $1.15
Hero: calls $1.15
tezonchik: folds
faustus2 has timed out while disconnected
faustus2: folds
The Cambist: folds
Interface21: folds
wordsmt: folds
chachar73: calls $0.65
*** FLOP *** [9h Js 9d]
chachar73: checks
daveaneo: bets $2.50
Hero: calls $2.50
chachar73: calls $2.50
*** TURN *** [9h Js 9d] [5d]
chachar73: checks
daveaneo: checks
Hero: bets $6.50
chachar73: folds
daveaneo: folds
Uncalled bet ($6.50) returned to Hero
Hero collected $10.70 from pot
Hero: doesn't show hand
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $11.20 | Rake $0.50
Board [9h Js 9d 5d]
Seat 1: Interface21 (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 2: wordsmt (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 3: chachar73 (big blind) folded on the Turn
Seat 4: Blood Out444 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: daveaneo folded on the Turn
Seat 6: Hero collected ($10.70)
Seat 7: tezonchik folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 8: faustus2 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 9: The Cambist folded before Flop (didn't bet)

Edit 2:

Initial thoughts are that the games don't immediately seem too dissimilar to before. Many of the regs that I used to bump into are still present in the games. I imagine that they have improved beyond my old standard by now though.

I was reading through some old posts on this blog, and it's clear to me that I used to think at a much higher level than I do now. A year out of the game is a long time, and I may never return to that standard (in fact I'm pretty sure that I won't).

However what today's play has reminded me of is that I used to love the challenge of playing hands against thinking opponents; the challenge of assigning ranges and making the right decision. I've missed the battle with these regs that I used to compete with day in and day out. So I'd like to keep this little renaissance going; perhaps I begun to take the old battles for granted and forgot that I actually relished them.

So expect to see more posts in the near future as I begin to rediscover my passion for the game. I'll never be as sharp as I was but at least I'm back!